LOUISIANA RED HOT RECORDS

Posts in the ROCK category

THE BLUEBIRDS

THE BLUEBIRDS

BIO

Blues-rockers the Bluebirds consisted primarily of brothers Buddy and Bruce Flett, Louisiana natives who formed the group in their hometown of Shreveport in 1987. The siblings — Buddy on guitar, Bruce on bass, and both on vocals — cut their teeth in A-Train, an outfit popular among Louisiana and Texas club patrons throughout its ten-year existence; immediately after the group’s dissolution, the Fletts reunited as the Bluebirds, originally a Tuesday night jam band which became a far more serious concern with the 1995 release of their debut LP Swamp Stomp. South from Memphis followed a year later.

The Bluebirds is a band that plays: high energy, fun-filled fusion of Louisiana rock ´n roll, good old fashioned blues and rockabilly, sprinkled with a bit of tex – mex and garnished with soul. The Bluebirds genuine musical mix has taken the band all over the world: Australia, USA, Europe and the Nordic countries.

The band is now almost back to the original setting, since the start in 1989. Or as Michelle for the Live Magazine (U.S.A) has written:“The irony of having a band from Sweden play American blues music better than nearly any group I had ever heard before was not lost on me”. Blues association of Queensland, Australia says:“Have you been waiting ´round for another band like The Fabulous Thunderbirds to come along? Well, your wait is over, the Bluebirds have arrived”, and they are ready to rock the house!

www.bluebirds.se

HONEY ISAND SWAMP BAND

Honey Island Swamp BandBIO

Great music begins with great songs, and great songs are what the Honey Island Swamp Band is all about. The band came together after Aaron Wilkinson (acoustic guitar, mandolin, vocals) and Chris Mule’ (electric guitar, vocals) were marooned in San Francisco after the levee breaches following Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, and had a chance encounter with fellow New Orleans evacuees Sam Price (bass, vocals) and Garland Paul(drums, vocals) at John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom Room on Fillmore Street. They knew each other from having all played together in some form or another in various New Orleans bands, and with the great unknown regarding their return to their underwater hometown looming in the distance, they decided to put together a band and get some gigs going. Fortunately, the Boom Boom Room’s owner Alex Andreas offered the band a weekly gig on the spot.

Sunday nights at the Boom Boom Room soon became a favorite of Bay Area roots music lovers, who have a long-standing affinity for New Orleans music and musicians. Two months into the residency, sound engineer Robert Gatley approached the band with a rare opportunity — he wanted to record a Honey Island Swamp Band album at the legendary Record Plant studios in Sausalito, where he worked. The 7-song eponymous debut “Honey Island Swamp Band”came together beautifully, with Wilkinson and Mulé both contributing favorite originals, and was received so well that they all decided to continue the band upon moving back to New Orleans in 2007.

Honey Island Swamp Band‘s music has been described as “Bayou Americana”with timeless songs from Wilkinson & Mulé, highlighted by Mulé’s searing guitar, Wilkinson’s sure-handed mandolin, and 4-part vocal harmonies, all anchored by the powerful groove of Price & Paul’s Louisiana stomp rhythm section. The addition of Trevor Brooks on Hammond B-3 organ to the HISB family in 2010 has rounded out the band’s sound, which draws from a variety of influences in the world of roots music, including artists such as Lowell George & Little Feat, The Band, Taj Mahal, Gram Parsons, Jerry Garcia, Johnny Cash, Jimmy Reed, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, and New Orleans’ own Earl King and Dr. John.

In April 2009, the band released its first full-length album entitled Wishing Well. The album was well-received and based on the strength of such songs as “Natural Born Fool”, “Till the Money’s Gone”, and the  title track, Wishing Wellwas awarded 2009′s “Best Blues Album” by OffBeat Magazine, which also named HISB as 2009’s “Best Emerging Artist” and 2010’s “Best Roots Rock Artist”. Most recently HISB won the award for “Best Roots Rock Artist” of 2011 at the Big Easy Awards, New Orleans’ most prestigious arts and entertainment honors.

2010’s Good To You was named to several “Top Ten CDs of 2010″ lists, and has quickly become a staple on the Crescent City’s legendary radio station WWOZas well as on Sirius/XM Bluesville. It features the southern strut of songs such as “Be Good”, “300 Pounds” and the album’s first single “Chocolate Cake.”

Now the band is gearing up for their first nationally-distributed studio recording, Cane Sugar, on Louisiana Red Hot Records in late July 2013. Produced by Grammy-winning producer John Porter, the 12 new songs illuminate the mix of country-inflected rock, New Orleans funky blues and infectious songwriting that makes Honey Island Swamp Band‘s music so familiar yet unique at the same time. Cane Sugar is by far their most fully-realized recording to date and reflects the finely tuned unit the band has become after incessant touring.

PRESS

“Somewhere, there exists a dark, smoky bar with a jukebox that spins George Jones, Gram Parsons, Delbert McClinton, and Little Feat. And if that fantasy honky-tonk lights your Marlboro, you need to know about Honey Island Swamp Band.” – Broward-Palm Beach New Times

“Vintage country meets Gulf Coast boogie-woogie blues.” – Bthesite, Baltimore Sun

“The Honey Island Swamp is a real place. It resides near the border of Louisiana and Mississippi. It’s therefore a fitting name for this band that draws inspiration from the music of those two states. With the Honey Island Swamp Band, soul, country, R&B and blues are all on equal footing. The two man songwriting/guitarist team of Chris Mulé and Aaron Wilkinson produce expressive, hook-laden tunes that honor songcraft while respecting the groove.” – Jambase.com

“What a fine band this is – an utterly refreshing, unpretentious group of first-rate instrumentalists who also sing engagingly. Their music is as delicious as their name.” – Susan Peña, The Reading Eagle

www.honeyislandswampband.com

 

COLIN LAKE

BIO

Seven years ago while visiting New Orleans in the springtime, Seattle native Colin Lake met his future wife in the Louis Armstrong International airport. The meeting sparked a cosmic chain reaction that would change his life forever.

Overwhelmed by the gravity that seemed to be drawing him to the city, Lake made his home in The Big Easy less than a year later, and his passion and innate feel for roots music found fertile ground. Lake draws from a unique musical palette, creating songs that reflect a personal journey which has already spanned great distances, both spiritually and geographically.

While his soulful vocal style and searing touch on the lap steel guitar owe heavily to countless blues greats, Lake’s knack for song craft defies genre and is what truly sets him apart. Lake’s latest release One Thing That’s For Sure captures his personal sound, which springs from songs teeming with penetrating lyrics and gritty sincerity. On the album’s eleven original songs, Lake sings of love and longing, truth and transcendence, hope and struggle. Indeed, they are love songs, but not exclusively in the romantic sense. They are songs that celebrate love’s well-earned triumph over fear, treading the territory where light and shadows meet.

On songs like “I’m Trying to Tell You” and the heavily distorted “Pay the Price”, Lake offers desperate pleas reminiscent of a man fighting for his life. The chorus of the laid back title track and the sun-soaked refrain of “She’s Mine” finds the singer swelling with joy as he revels in the spoils of love. And why shouldn’t he? These songs were born in New Orleans, the world capital of joyful expression. Lake may not have been born there, but he will tell you that in New Orleans he was born again.

In the past year, Lake has opened for acts like Dr. John and Gary Clark Jr, and performed at festivals around the country, including the 2015 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the 2013 Austin City Limits Music Festival, Alabama’s Hangout Beach, Music and Arts Festival, the Key West Songwriters Festival and New Orleans’ French Quarter Festival.

PRESS

“Songs as sturdy as his fleet-fingered, blues-based guitar skills” – Keith Spera, Times Picayune

“If John Mayor had any actual soul, he’d be the Seattle-bred, New Orleans based Colin Lake.” – Brett Milano, Offbeat Magazine

www.colinlake.com

THE LAST HOMBRES

Last HombresBIO

The Last Hombres and American icons, the Band, share more than just great songwriting, expert musicianship, rocking country melodies and a rhythm section reminiscent of Stax. Indeed it was band luminaries Buddy Cage, Rick Danko and Levon Helm that helped nudge The Last Hombres into existence, with Levon joining principal songwriters Paul Schmitz (guitar, vocals), Michael Meehan (bass, vocals), and Russ Seeger (guitars, vocals) for a two year stint and the acclaimed 2003 album Redemption.

Eventually, Levon decided to stay closer to home, leaving the remaining tres Hombres to spin apart. A decade of side gigs, studio work and solo projects followed, until drummer Tom Ryan convinced the Hombres to reform, along with multi instrumentalist Chris James. The result – Odd Fellows Rest – a superb album of literate roots rock, surrealistic alternative country, and dusk colored gypsy outlaw ballads.

PRESS

“It’s unusual to kick off and close your first album in 11 years with the New Orleans funeral sound of the Hot 8 Brass Band, but little about The Last Hombres follows any sort of blueprint…” – Hal Horowitz, American Songwriter

“Spacey keyboards native to that of The Doors are greeted by Tom Petty-esque vocals which are laced with twangy, steel guitars. These are the sounds heard on The Last Hombres’s album Odd Fellows Rest. This album seems like that of an elaborate experiment; mixing and blending their favorite technicalities from different genres of music. The result? A master craft style of music.” – Jackie Howell, Blues Rock Review

“The Last Hombres make the kind of old school blues rock books are written about. It’s salty, swaggering, sweaty, and soaring at all the right moments. Their latest opus Odd Fellows Rest carries on that tradition successfully as well, making for one of their best outings yet.” – Rick Florino, Artist Direct

www.thelasthombres.com

LILLI LEWIS

Lilli LewisBIO

With vocals said to have “enough energy to power a large city, Lilli Lewis is a singer, pianist, and composer of rare grace and grit. Paired with a love for music that began before she composed her first song on the piano at age three, her progressive, provocative, and conscientious presence is fueled by a boundless appetite for poetry and rhythm. Whether looping solo a cappella as “a one woman Sweet Honey in the Rock,” throwing down with full on soul psychedelica, the Athens, Georgia native has the power to stir even the stiffest listener.

Even though she was born to a Baptist minister in the deep south, Lewis grew up studying classical music, spending countless hours at the piano decoding Brahms and Beethoven well into the late hours of the night. She also knew she loved to sing from a very early age, and her near obsession with harmony led to early experiments in recording and overdubbing her voice to analog tape, a practice that ultimately made her a 2008 NewSong Competition regional finalist, and the A Cappella Recording Awards 2009 runner-up for best world-folk album, a title she shared with the Grammy Award winning Ladysmith Black Mambazo. It was upon her first hearing of the earthy a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock as a young teenager that Lewis determined she would have a musical story to tell outside of the world of classical music.

Since then, she’s been a featured performer on main stages across the US and abroad, making her home in New Orleans in 2014 and quickly becoming a sought after side arm to some of New Orleans’ most musical elite, including Dirty Dozen Brass Band founding member and sousaphone master Kirk Joseph’s Backyard Groove. Equal parts unassuming and fearless, her own full band known simply as the The Lilli Lewis Project, features the Dozen’s own Takeshi Shimmura on lead guitar. The 8 piece is a rhythm and soul orchestra ensemble of depth, girth and decibels that delivers “innovative, soulful music that will never go out of style.”

www.lillilewis.com

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